16 June 2011

When a particular colour IS your identity.
When that connection is so strong, people even refer to you as 'the red men'.
When that colour is a clear point of difference against your closest rivals in blue.
When your 'customers' are unbelievably respectful to your history.
When that colour is what you are.

Why?

Because brand values matters.

Think Inter Milan? Blue. AC Milan? Red

Celtic? Green. Rangers? Blue.

O2? Blue. Vodaphone? Red. Orange? Err, orange.

It might only be a third kit, but it's the same as Vodaphone changing their branding to blue on their less popular stores.
It doesn't happen.
Because brand values matter.

06 May 2011

I made a phone call yesterday to the Eden Project box office to buy some tickets for their excellent Eden Sessions. As is often the way with ticket hotlines, my call was held in a queue. And every so often a voice would cut in.

But unlike the usual "your call is important to us"or some dull, generic sales messages, a Cornish sounding voice cut in and told me that bananas are indeed Britain's favourite fruit. I was taken back by both the accent (not the usual, unspecified region corporate voice) and the message itself.

Next up he explained how indigo dye is in fact yellow until it touches denim at which point it turns blue.

Then... hemp can create four times as much paper per area grown as trees.

And... If you stacked all our annual household waste up it would reach the moon.

By now I was actually looking forward to each new interesting fact, each message interesting and aligned to the Eden Project's values, and had forgotten about being held in a queue until a nice, helpful lady answered my call.

It made me wonder why so few companies use any imagination on their telephone hold systems. After all, it's another customer touch point and an opportunity to reinforce your brand.

05 April 2011

The recent cuts in Arts Council funding provoked predictable arguments on radio phone ins, with opinions either totally for or against the value of the arts.

One caller didn’t just want cuts in funding, he wanted ALL the arts money to be spent in the NHS on saving lives. This was followed by a pro-arts caller who responded by stating “the arts saves people’s lives too”.

Now I believe the arts are an important part of every culture, but can we really compare their restorative powers with those of a kidney dialysis machine?

04 February 2011

Interesting to read that figures for more traditional marketing methods – unaddressed advertising in particular – actually rose in 2010. ‘Leaflets’ as they are more affectionately known and the use of them amongst the UK’s biggest companies rose by a whopping 43% (increase spend of £11.6m to £38.8m).

So what has caused this shift to traditional methods of marketing when the current push is towards the more sexy digital methods? Much of it is down to more advanced Geo-targeting tools that allow marketers to target to individual postcode areas and align to the demographic cluster required, thus improving response rates and reducing costs. And that old concern of "how do I know my leaflets won't all end up in the canal" is a thing of the past too. Distributors now wear GPS tracking devises, so their managers know exactly where they have been.

So are door drops the way forward?

Yes.

Or No.

As with any marketing activity, it depends what you are trying to achieve as to what the best tools to use are. And that's where a great marketing agency earns it's corn.